Chad's News

The Chad’s News phone network still uses one of those ancient plans where you pay 20¢ for each text message sent or received. Fortunately it’s possible to save some money by sending text messages via email. (Long-time Chad’s News readers will remember this post, where teleflip.com provided a single source for emailing text messages—but they’ve gone out of business.) The process is fairly straightforward, although it requires you to know the recipient’s cell provider. Here are the specifics for several major carriers (replace “number” with the actual 10-digit phone number).

Alltel:

number@message.alltel.com

AT&T:

number@txt.att.net

Nextel:

number@messaging.nextel.com

Sprint:

number@messaging.sprintpcs.com

T-Mobile:

number@tmomail.net

Verizon:

number@vtext.com

The linked articles have more detail, including additional ways to send texts (AIM anyone?). And remember that Chad’s News is a proud Verizon customer.

Link #1: http://www.popularmechanics.com/…
(via The Consumerist)

Link #2: http://www.komando.com/…

Here at Chad’s News, we’ve previously written about the lack of internet privacy and wireless security. Now we can extend that realm to include cell phones, especially ones that use GSM. At last month’s DEF CON convention, security researcher Chris Paget demonstrated a home-brewed cell phone tower setup that was able to easily intercept calls from members of the audience. The total cost of the hardware was about $1500.

This type of equipment, known as an IMSI catcher, has been available to law enforcement for years, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Link: http://www.wired.com/…
(via engadget)

Back in 1962, researchers at Corning developed a very strong glass that’s hard to break, scratch, or dent. The product didn’t gain acceptance, and Corning gave up trying to sell it—until recently, that is. “Gorilla Glass” is now being used for consumer electronics such as smartphones and netbooks, and is poised to enter the television market. Corning is making some serious money from this invention that couldn’t find a buyer 50 years ago.

Link #1: http://www.google.com/…
(via engadget)

Link #2: http://www.corning.com/…

Long-time Chad’s News readers will recall how Kyle MacDonald made a series of trades to go from a single red paperclip to a house. Well now, a teenager named Steven Ortiz started with an old cell phone and made deals on craigslist to trade up to a working Porsche Boxster. Admittedly, it took him 14 swaps over two years, but that’s still pretty impressive.

Link: http://www.whittierdailynews.com/…
(via Neatorama)

Several national governments are taking exception to the high level of security provided to Blackberry users. These governments want to be able to intercept and read messages from their citizens, but the Blackberry security protocols are just too good. And the manufacturer, Research In Motion (RIM), isn’t willing to degrade the security. As a result, the United Arab Emirates has decided to suspend several Blackberry services within its borders, and other countries are considering following suit, including India and Lebanon. An imminent shutoff in Saudi Arabia was averted only after RIM agreed to set up a local server in that country.

All I can say is that I’m grateful the founders of our country insisted on the First Amendment.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://dailycaller.com/…

Update: Looks like everything’s going to be okay after all.

If you have an older iPhone 3G and have found that it slows to a crawl under the latest iOS 4, there is a solution: downgrade to iOS 3.1.3. Note that this method only works for the iPhone 3G and not the 3GS—but there’s an entire forum dedicated to downgrading the 3GS, so perhaps it’s possible.

Thanks to Josh for this link.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

This is really neat! Get the Scrabble app for the iPad, and you can use iPhones as the tile racks (via the Tile Rack app).

Link: http://www.engadget.com/…

For the iPhone users out there, are you tired of AT&T’s poor coverage? “Mark the Spot” is an iPhone app that, when you have a service failure, registers a complaint with AT&T and tells them the exact location of the failure.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

Airlines have had e-tickets for some time now, but it’s still necessary to get a printed boarding pass. Well, even that is on the way out. My friend Josh sent this screen print of his iPhone. It’s a “mobile boarding pass,” and the airline accepts it from the phone display.

If you have a smartphone plan that allows Internet usage but charges extra for outgoing text or multimedia messaging, there’s a way to circumvent the messaging charges. Many cell phone plans include an email address that turns incoming emails into SMS/MMS messages on the recipient’s phone. Chad’s News wrote about this back in 2006, but teleflip.com appears to have gone belly-up. In the place of one central service like teleflip.com, the linked article has the SMS/MMS email addresses for various cell phone vendors. It’s a bit complicated, and you’ll have to know your recipient’s provider, but it saves money.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://www.iphonehacks.com/…

If you have a Google login and forget your password, you can have the reset code sent to your cell phone as a text message. Of course, you have to configure it with your cell phone number beforehand.

Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Here’s an interesting concept. You know all the power that radio and TV stations use to broadcast signals over the airwaves—most of which just dissipates away? This prototype Nokia phone uses that energy to recharge its battery. The power isn’t very much and won’t necessarily keep the phone fully charged while being actively used, but it would at least make the battery last longer between “wired” recharges. Expect to see this technology go live sometime in the next 3-5 years.

Link: http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/…
(via digg)